Leadership is learned behavior that becomes unconscious and automatic over time. For example, leaders can make several important decisions about an issue in the time it takes others to understand the question.

(From the article): Beyond decision making, successful leadership across all areas becomes learned and instinctual over a period of time. Successful leaders have learned the mastery of anticipating business patterns, finding opportunities in pressure situations, serving the people they lead and overcoming hardships.

I can’t get what I need. My boss doesn’t understand me. My organization’s systems don’t work. I don’t have the resources I need. My job doesn’t take advantage of my strengths. No one appreciates me. My boss micromanages me. There’s no room for me to grow. They don’t understand how much I could be contributing if only they’d give me a chance.

If you’re human, I imagine you’ve thought or invoked one of these statements. I know I have.

Even though we may be able to justify these types of statements, they often reflect our own assumed constraints: beliefs that allow us to escape personal accountability and fall victim to circumstances or the actions of others. In the new Self Leadership program I co-created with Ken Blanchard and Laurence Hawkins, we teach that self leadership is about having the mindset and skillset to accept responsibility and take initiative.

While it is wonderful to learn how to ask for the direction and support you need to be successful in your role, it’s also important to remember that when something goes wrong, there’s no one else to blame.

The responsibility for your success at work falls to you. The good news is that you have a choice. Is developing the mindset and skillset required to be a self leader worth your effort? Yes! A not-so-hard truth: the benefits of self leadership are as good for you as they are for your organization.

Our findings focus on the enormous potential to change things by modifying culture, mind-set and behaviour. Behaviour and profound lack of understanding of the changing public mood explain a series of leadership failures in the public and private sectors in recent months.

As a leader, if you don’t like the culture that exists in your organization, you must understand your role in it, and your ability to address it.

donhornsby's insight:

The reality is leadership defines culture. People look to the leadership for their role models, for guides on how to behave. This goes for everything accountability, punctuality, sexual discrimination, etc., etc., if the boss practices these then the rest of the team will feel comfortable to follow suit. The leader sets the tone for whats acceptable. This is true for both positive traits as well as the negative traits mentioned above.

What do you stand for? What is your "servant purpose" on this planet? Who are you serving and “to what end" are you toiling? What are your values, the principles that describe what is “right” in your heart, day to day? Most humans don’t ponder these questions. The answers to these questions can lead one to be their best self daily. Your best self is when you’re living in alignment with your servant purpose and with your values and behaviors. You serve others nimbly, willingly and kindly, all the time.

donhornsby's insight:

What are your values? What are the principles that guide you daily? If you hold values like integrity, service, excellence, and respect in high regard, take steps to formalize them - so you know exactly what values you’re aspiring to daily.

When faced with such decisions, we can examine one option at a time or review all our options together.

donhornsby's insight:

Why is it the case that people make better decisions when they view options all together rather than one at a time? One possibility is that with all the information in front of them, people can compare the options more thoroughly and can more easily identify the best option. But when people view options one at a time, they form an overall judgment about each option and then have to go back and compare.

How do you want to make a difference in this world?

Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter so the world will be at least be a little bit different for our having passed through it. ― (Rabbi Harold Kushner)

donhornsby's insight:

How do you want to make a difference in this world? Your "Boom" for today. ﻿

It’s about being known for your clever thoughts, rather than just being known. When you’re a thought leader, you have earned some genuine respect, and admiration which comes from being innovative and sincere. It’s all very inspirational, isn’t it?

Even more inspirational are the potentially massive business returns. If people admire what you have to say and look to you as an authority in your industry, they will invest in you and trust your brand – no matter if you’re a B2B or B2C organisation.

Now comes the hard part – being the innovative one who stands out over everyone else trying to be a thought leader at the same time. Luckily, we can help with that.

Traditional corporate performance evaluations need to be updated as they are having a negative impact on culture. The focus needs to shift from “managing talent” to creating an optimal culture where talent can thrive.

In a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, close to 20,000 employees around the world say there's one thing that leaders need to demonstrate. Hint: Aretha Franklin sang about it 50 years ago.

donhornsby's insight:

Lets just get right to the bottom of this: What exactly do employees want in their leaders the most?

In a truly beautiful letter to his daughter Yolande, Sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois extolled the virtues of being uncomfortable. Yolande was headed to a new school halfway around the world from the neighborhood and people she knew. It was years before women had the right to vote, and decades before the Civil Rights Movement. Du Bois knew she would have more than a few fish-out-of-water moments. Instead of trying to shield her from them, he asked her to revel in them: “Don’t shrink from new experiences and custom. Take the cold bath bravely. Enter into the spirit of your big bed-room. Enjoy what is and not pine for what is not. Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself. Make yourself do unpleasant things, so as to gain the upper hand of your soul. Above all remember: your father loves you and believes in you and expects you to be a wonderful woman.”

How we deal with the uncomfortable is definitely a reflection on our leadership. What I find and witness is that when we just confront the uncomfortable most situations turn out better than our fear was suggesting to us

It’s not your manager’s fault if you have nothing to talk about in your 1 on 1 meeting. In fact, every time you come to your meeting with nothing to discuss, it makes them dread their 1 on 1 meeting with you a little more. It also gives them another reason to want to cancel, or fill the time with status updates. No one likes pulling teeth, and it can be excruciating to try to draw everything out of you. This is why it’s important for you to think about what you want to talk about. Don’t make your answer to, “what do you want to talk about?” a blank stare.

Caring for your health and family gives you the stamina and motivation to develop a sound business strategy that delivers real value.

donhornsby's insight:

Not every entrepreneur will become a success. Some will choose other things over their business. Others will burnout because, frankly, they burnt the candle at both ends. Worse yet, some will be completely ignored. However, Sheth believes if you follow each of these five habits, you can be found in the ranks of successful entrepreneurs who have realized it’s a little bit of strategy, a little bit of healthy and a little bit of family that makes up the whole part of the entrepreneur in the end.

It can certainly be lonely at C-suite, but nobody should get to such a position that they can’t ask for help and guidance. This is why one source has declared that the smartest business move an executive can ever make is to hire an executive coach. In fact, a number of COOs and CEOs have come forward to discuss their use of executive coaches, explaining the advantages it has offered them. But are executive coaches really worth the money? What benefits do they offer and how can your day-to-day work and home life improve as a result?

There's no shortage of career advice out there and everyone from your favorite self help gurus to your least favorite in-law thinks they're an expert on the subject. Good advice — useful, nuanced, and proven — is harder to come by. After all, it's tough to suss out what employers value in their workforce, or their applicant pool, without asking them directly. So we decided to do just that. Below, 14 CEOs reveal the skill they're most excited to see in an employee these days. Take note: Some of these will help you stand out at your current gig; others will give you an edge when you go to look for your next one.

1

donhornsby's insight:

Mike Whitaker, tech CEO, author of "The Decision Makeover": "The skill of adapting to what is changing , right now, preserves and drives a career. A career professional with the mindset of remaining adaptive expects the workplace and the customer to change tomorrow. So when the change occurs, they're already prepared. Those are the people I want working for me."

As a business leader, you are either building relationship capital or disengagement in your organization. Employee disengagement has been a persistent problem for a number of years. There is no more performance to be gained by maintaining the status quo in our companies. Building a winning organizational culture today is an imperative.

For many organizations to compete effectively in the marketplace, they will need to cooperate effectively within their organization and with customers, partners, and suppliers. This may require them to nurture and shape their culture by capturing and building relationship capital.

You would think that asking for what you want would be the easiest thing in the world to do. But it isn’t!

donhornsby's insight:

Are any of these familiar to you? There is also a spiritual aspect to this. The Law of Attraction, says that people who explicitly express and ask for what they want have a higher chance of attracting and achieving it. In one of my past blogs “Three empowering quotes about Courage” I wrote about the power of taking a stand. That is a very powerful way to ask for what you want. It takes courage to dream and believe that you can achieve it. It takes courage to declare what we want, ask for it and pursue it. Yes, you may fail or fall short and that could be disappointing. However, would you rather go for it and fall short, or fail from not trying in the first place?! Unfortunately, I see too many people suffer from the latter. Early in my career, I had a powerful mentor who kept telling me: “If you take on big dreams and then do the right things for long enough you will always get your desired outcome!” I took what he taught me to heart and saw just how true and powerful it is. You can do the same.

Use them to resolve conflict, challenge old ways of working, and keep things in perspective.

donhornsby's insight:

Leaders should ask these questions both on a daily basis and during critical moments. Of course, these aren’t the only questions to ask; context certainly matters. But I have found these five to be a very practical and useful way to ensure understanding, generate new ideas, inspire progress, encourage responsibility, and remain focused on what is genuinely important.

Overall, working in an office is a fairly low-risk job: accidents are rare. However, with the sobering effects on mortality rates from sitting all day, the office just might be the death of you—if you let it. Fortunately, it’s very easy to implement these simple changes and live a healthier life in and out of the office. Don’t feel like you need to run a 5k at lunch. Just get up from the chair and head to the kitchen for a glass of water—it’s that easy.

So when I say to myself, let’s say I’m going out to pitch a new book. Dan, you can do this. You got this! Yeah, it pumps me up a little bit. I like telling myself I’m awesome. I love hearing from myself that I’m awesome.

If I told you that almost 80% of LinkedIn members consider professional networking to be important to new job opportunities and career success, you might not be too surprised. But did you know that 70% of people were hired at a company where they had a connection?

Whether you’re reconnecting with a former colleague, searching for a job or looking for a potential candidate, you can start an instant conversation from anywhere on LinkedIn. If you need a conversation starter, LinkedIn shows you career milestones such as a job change, connections in common and many other insights to break the ice. Additionally, we now surface people you know within messaging when you’re looking at a job listing or a company page to help you identify where you have an in. What are you waiting for...now is the time to message your network and catch up. You never know who will help you find your way in. #TheWayIn

Many companies confuse purpose, vision and mission statements, often using them interchangeably, blurring their true meaning.

Purpose is what guides you. It articulates why you do what you do, why your organisation exists. Mission is what drives you. It is the strategic path your organisation follows to fulfil your vision. Vision is what you aspire to. It is the destination it you wish to reach, the state into which you hope to transform over time. In other words, Purpose is your why. Mission is your how. Vision is your where and what.

Merely looking at what worked in the past will not solve the interconnected challenges we face today. Truly purpose-driven organisations are built on future needs rather than best practices. To become tomorrow’s company, leaders must have the courage to invent future practices, which go beyond today’s predominant management principles. Leaders need to learn from early adopters in this field to progress their thinking, learning, behaving and being.

“Learning to recognize your leadership gap is the factor that determines your greatness as a leader.”

donhornsby's insight:

The Leadership Gap provides the antidote for leading on autopilot. Daskal provides the insight into our behaviors and beliefs that can if not managed properly can derail even the most talented and successful leaders. Confronting and avoiding our leadership gaps is the key to attaining long-term leadership success.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.